


Markings of Truth

by rehaniah



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Prompt Fic, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:04:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rehaniah/pseuds/rehaniah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt fic for this: "Lavellan has an intricate vallaslin, not only on her face but Along her body as well. Her LI is very intrigued and decides to explore and trace it. ** a huge bonus for LI undressing her and letting down her hair"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Markings of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this DEFINATELY came out longer than I intended and I didn’t manage to incorporate the letting down of her hair (sorry anon!) but hair is featured in it!! ;D
> 
> Also, it's unedited so please forgive the numerous mistakes that are sure to be within (will try and get round to it sometime *she hopes*!!)

 

It’s as she looks at him under the ethereal glow of the moonlit glade that she fully realises just how much she has fallen in love with him…

 

The knowledge is far from an easy one to bear.

 

For though she has laid her heart out before him, has allowed herself to become more vulnerable than she ever thought she would be –than she ever thought she _could_ be– she knows that he is holding back. She knows that there is something in him that he is not willing to share with her… and she feels that he may allow it to sunder them completely.

 

But he is talking to her now and she wills her mind to listen fully, to focus on him fully, knowing that his words, no matter what they may be, are always worth hearing:

 

“I was trying to determine some way to tell you what you mean to me…” His face looks down at her so sincerely, yet still there remains that shadow behind his eyes, lurking just of reach – out of _her_ reach.

 

She tries to shrug off the foreboding feeling, to lull herself into believing that maybe her beautiful, wise, exceptional, _untouchable_ elf has simply brought her here for company…

 

“I’m listening,” she replies, adding lightly, “And I can offer a few suggestions if you like..?”

 

Her rather inept attempt at flirting is worth it when she sees the smile flickering across his lips. “I shall bear that in mind,” he answers, humour in voice. But it fades all too quickly as he continues, “For now, the best gift I can offer… is the truth.”

 

That foreboding feeling returns, twisting her gut uncomfortably until he speaks again.

 

“You are unique. In all Thedas I never expected to find someone who could draw my attention from The Fade. You have become important to me.” She raises her eyes to his and he holds them with his own as he finishes with the words: “More important than I could have imagined.”

 

She blinks in something akin to shock at the openness with which he was expressing himself and he heart flutters in both trepidation and hope. “As you are to me,” she replies with all earnestness.

 

He seems to take a deep a breath, as if preparing himself. When he speaks again, his words seem to come less easily. “Then what I must tell you – the truth.” His eyes flow over her. “Your face. The Vallaslin. In my journeys in The Fade, I have seen things.”

 

Okay, now she was really quite confused. She didn’t understand why he was suddenly talking about her blood writing… And when he says, “I have discovered what those marks mean,” she doesn’t hesitate to reply.

 

“They honor the elven gods.”

 

It’s when he shakes his head and tells her “No” that her confusion begins to turn more into uneasiness.

 

“They are slave markings.” He voices the statement without preamble, without prelude and it is only the seriousness on his face that keeps her from responding immediately, heatedly. She barely hears his next statement. “Or at least they were in the time of ancient Arlathan.”  

 

She feels staggered, stunned… Surely Solas had it wrong? The Vallaslin _couldn’t_ be slave markings. They just couldn’t be.

 

“My clan’s keeper said they honored the gods. These are their symbols,” she responds, an unbidden but not entirely unwelcome note of anger in her voice. Her markings had been with her for her entire life. They’d been what defined her, what stood her apart from everyone else long before she’d been bestowed with the title ‘Inquisitor’. She didn’t understand how he could just come out and make such a claim.

 

“Yes, that’s right. A noble would mark his slaves to honor the god he worshipped. After Arlathan fell, the dalish forgot.”

 

And it was his face; his face that remained so calm yet firm and which bore _not one hint_ of doubt or uncertainty which convinces her that he is telling her the truth. The whole truth: That the marks she’d borne so proudly all this time were nothing more than a lie.

 

Her gaze drops, unable to hold his any longer. She looks to the ground but her eyes don’t see it, don’t comprehend… She looks back up to him in utter dismay. “So, this is… what?” she questions helplessly. “Just one more thing the dalish got wrong?”

 

She watches his expression turn to one of sorrow, of remorse. “I’m sorry,” he states softly.

 

She weakly shakes her head, looking away as she speaks the thoughts of her mind. “We try to preserve our culture… and this is what we keep? Relics of a time when we were no better than Tevintar.” She brings her eyes back to his.

 

“Don’t say that,” he replies, and now the almost ever-present seriousness is laced with something more. Something firmer, _stronger_. “For all they got wrong, the dalish did one thing right: They made you.”

 

And she wishes with all her heart that he could have said those words at a different time and place – because she so longed to hear them, however fleeting or hopeless they may be… But now they would be forever tainted by what she had just discovered.

  
She goes to walk away. She doesn’t truly know why because it’s not that she ever wants to be away from him – but her mind feels fractured and her body seems not to want to stay.

 

But he halts her by taking her hand in his, drawing her back to look at him.

 

“I didn’t tell you this to hurt you,” he tells her earnestly. “If you like, I know a spell. I can remove the vallaslin.”

 

_That_ stops her in her tracks. Her mind seems to have to process what he’s actually just said –what he’s just offered to her– before she can look back at him.

 

She has to gather herself before she begins. “If what you’re saying is true–”    

 

“It is,” he assures.

 

“Then…” she frowns before finishing firmly, “Then my people vowed never to submit to slavery.” She was bearing the marks of a slave whilst proclaiming to be free: It was corrupted, it was unjust, it was _wrong_ …

 

It was…all wrong...

 

He brings her focus back, his face now apologetic, regretful, even though he had only told her the truth. “I’m so sorry for causing you pain. It was selfish of me. I look at you and I see what you truly are. And you deserve better than what those cruel marks represent.”

 

And in her soul, she knows that he is right. She understands now that the marks are cruel. That they began as a form of cruelty; masters inflicting pain on their servants, their slaves… and yet…

 

And yet…

 

She’s not sure.

 

She’s not sure even though she feels that she _should_ be. She should be sure. She should be willing –eager– to remove them, to be rid of such contemptible symbols marring her elven skin.

 

And yet…

 

She looks to him once more. He stands before her, patiently awaiting her response, his eyes gentle in the moonlight. She knows he would not hurt her, that his _spell_ would not hurt her.

  
“What…” Her voice trails away, too faint to truly be heard. She has to whet her lips to try again, “What would the spell do, exactly?” she asks, needing to know.

 

His expression is tender, caring, but instead of answering her, he takes hold of her hand, drawing her over to a spot where the grass lay smooth and soft.

 

She follows him willingly, and when he beseeches her to “Sit” she does so.

 

He seats himself just in front of her, looking at her a moment before raising his hand to gently trail the very tips of his fingers down her forehead, over the vallislin.

 

At the touch of his skin of hers, she feels a serene kind of warmth flow over her, but whether this was from some kind of minute spell he’d cast or just because it was simply him, she’s not certain. She hears his voice through a veil of tranquillity.

 

“I promise you won’t feel a thing.”

 

She opens her eyes to see him close to her, closer than he was before, his fingers still resting on her face. Despite everything, she can’t help wishing that they could stay like this forever.

 

“What about the other ones?” she whispers.

 

The pale smoothness of his brow creases just slightly. “What do you mean ‘other ones’?” he questions.

 

Now he was the one looking confused and she suddenly feels self-conscious. She had expected him to…well, to already know that she had the vallislin elsewhere on her body – even though obviously no one had ever seen it except for her and the matriarch of her clan who performed the blood writing... Did he really have no idea?

 

“I have the vallaslin… elsewhere as well,” she explains, endeavouring not to sound embarrassed. In truth, she never had been before, not even when she’d first had it done. It was only because it was _him_. He who was so close to her in more ways than she could even name…

 

Yet still his countenance remained perplexed, his voice low and solemn. “I...” he begins but then seems to trail off as his eyes grow contemplative. She watches him give a small shake of his head before continuing, “I’ve never known anyone to have the vallislin anywhere but their face.” He was focused on her intently but she could tell that he was intrigued as well by what she had said.

 

And even though she knows she would have to endure her embarrassment and even though she had been taught even since she was young that such things were improper for those that were unwed, she forces her reservations away from her. She forces them away from her because it was _him_ and because she knows beyond a shadow of doubt that if anyone was to see her so openly then it would be him. For she would choose him every time.

 

  1. _Time_.



 

“Would you like to see them?” she whispers.

 

She knows she’s caught him off guard by the flicker in his eyes; surprise, shock, followed almost immediately – _too quickly_ – by hesitation. “I…” he falters. She can see him silently fighting with himself, pitting intrigue against propriety and his self-inflicted reticence in regard to her.

 

She doesn’t wait for him to answer. Instead she looks down to bring her fingers to the metallic fastenings of her tunic. She begins to undo them.

 

She can feel his eyes are on her, on her movements. She can sense the reluctance on the tip of his tongue but she doesn’t want to hear it. She _really_ doesn’t want to hear it. So she focuses solely on working her way down each ornate buckle.

 

Only once she’s reached the very last clasp, the material hanging loosely against her, does she raise her head to look at him again. He’s focused on the strip of skin now displayed in between the two sides of the garment and she can’t help but feel a rush of exhilaration at the desire that’s etched so plainly across his features.

 

Sensing her gaze on him, he raises his back up to meet it.

 

Again though, she doesn’t want to risk him drawing back from her. Thus once her fingers release that last clasp she immediately turns around so that her back was facing him.

 

She looks over her shoulder as she draws the tunic down her arms, allowing it to fall unheeded onto the dewy grass beneath.

 

His indrawn breath is audible in the stillness of the air surrounding them. Again she feels that rush of exhilaration at causing such a reaction from such a controlled, stoic man, but this time it’s tinged with unsureness – she’s not sure whether he is fascinated or horrified at the myriad of intricate designs displayed across her shoulder blades and down her spine…

 

But then she feels him move closer to her, feels the heat radiating off his face as he brings it closer to her exposed skin.

 

Their eyes meet as she looks back at him. There’s a torrent of emotions within his gaze: wonder, astonishment, incomprehension but above them all, something else. Something strongly resembling lust.

 

“Touch them,” she breathes. She doesn’t even realise that the words have escaped until it is too late – she doesn’t want to break the spell, doesn’t want to risk him withdrawing from her.

 

But evidently her words are just what he needs for the permission, the invitation –whatever he sees it as– seems to give him the extra incentive he needs to step over that boundary.

 

And when she feels his fingers lay themselves so gently, so reverently on her skin, she feels the entire world fall away.

 

She lets her mind fall into bliss as she revels in the unprecedented experience of his touch. She feels him lift his other hand to trace the lines down the opposite side of her back. His fingertips are dry, slightly roughened but they send a thrill through her like nothing she’s ever imagined.

 

And then he is drawing closer still to her so that when his touch returns, it is laced with the heat of his breath as he studies her even more keenly.

 

When he finally speaks his voice is so soft, it could almost be described as worshipful. “I’ve never seen anything like this before…”

 

Her eyes close in pure pleasure when the warmest of palms slides its way along her spine, caressing it before coming to rest across the back of her neck. She feels the way it drifts over the contours of her intricate plaited braid and when she feels him gently smooth it forward so that it falls heavily over her left shoulder, she automatically assumes it’s because he wants an even more uninhibited view of the vallislin–

 

So when she instead feels the hot press of his lips at her throat, she lets out a gasp that is as much of surprise as it is sensation.

 

His lips do not leave but instead linger and it is so easy, so natural, to let her body sag backwards against the strong mass of his chest.

 

Nevertheless, when she turns her head towards him, she can still see desire battling with reticence. Yet he doesn’t move away when she lifts her face up to his.

 

The kiss begins slow, tentative almost, as if it were there first one all over again. She knows that he is still holding back – if anything, the discovery of the vallislin seems to have made him even more reticent in his attentions, but she doesn’t want him to be. She wants him so much, so completely that she doesn’t care about the matters of her own embarrassment, her own nervousness at the situation. She just wants him and she wants him to know it.

 

Which is why she lifts her hand to cup the back of his head in order to deepen the kiss. The angle is awkward for her, her body twisted as it was, but she would gladly remain that way if it meant she could continue touching him.

 

Yet still he holds back, his hands hovering above her skin now rather than caressing it, just waiting to take hold of her shoulders and pull her away from him...

 

The kiss deepens even further but she knows he’s not accepting her the way he did when they were in The Fade, when he caught her hand and drew her to him to pour his unrestrained passion into her.

 

She wants that now. So much so that she ends up whispering against his lips: “Please…”

 

His head draws back from her, his eyes so piercing, so intense that it’s as if they are looking into her very soul… and she lets him. She lets him see just how much she desires him, how much she loves him, and prays to the Maker that it’s enough.

 

It is.

  
Whatever barrier he’d established within himself cracks and then breaks down completely as he takes hold of her head and crashes his mouth down upon hers.

 

She doesn’t hesitate to respond. The kiss is beyond intense, beyond fervent. He plunders her mouth like a man deprived of the very thing that keeps him alive.

 

And she revels in it, meeting his tongue and teeth and pressing herself back against him ardently.

 

When he abruptly breaks away from her she can’t help but suffer a flash of dread, but then she feels his hands on her arms and he is guiding her to turn around, impelling her to lie down on the grass, her body stretched out beneath him–

 

And then he catches sight of them: the markings that snaked their way across her hipbones, the ones he wouldn’t have been able to make out when she still had her tunic on, the ones that flowed down underneath the belted band at her waistline...

 

His eyes look back to her, bright and clear despite the dimness of the light, their appearance questioning, searching.

 

Her right hand moves outward in order to find his, to wrap her fingers round the column of his wrist and then lead it across the smooth tautness of her stomach. Decisively, purposefully, she places his fingers atop the fastening of her belt.

 

His eyes dart down and then back up. He examines her face for a determining moment – and then he has covered her body with his and taken her mouth again.

 

He undoes her belt and the laces of her breeches as she runs her hands over his broad shoulders, smoothing them down his muscled arms before she reaches the hem of his shirt. He breaks away to allow her to pull the garment up and off of him but she barely has time to admire his sculptured chest before his mouth is back on hers.

 

Her body temperature is rising at an astronomical rate and her lungs are straining as Solas’ weight presses against her – but she is in heaven, falling completely into the sensations he was bringing out in her and when he tears his mouth away to lathe his tongue against her neck, she moans in sheer ecstasy.

 

She swears she hears the briefest, rumbling chuckle but before she can marshal herself to address it, he’s moved down to attach his lips around peak of her breast and _that_ draws an even more uninhibited sound from her, along with an arch of her spine that serves only to push her more closer to the delightful caress.

 

He quickly switches his attentions to her other mound as the fingers of his right hand take the previous place of his mouth causing her to writhe underneath him like a fennec in heat.

 

“Solas…” she breathes, her hands clenching and unclenching on his shoulders. She wants to draw him back up to her, wants to touch and explore his body like he’s touching and exploring hers, but he seems not to be in the mood to oblige her.

 

Instead he leaves her chest to trail lingering, open-mouthed kisses over the trembling flesh of her stomach. Only when his hands lay themselves over the untied laces at her waistband does he raise his head.

 

His eyes are hooded, darkened with desire and lust. It’s a heady thrill for her to witness him like this and _know_ that she –that her body– is the cause.

 

He holds her gaze as he takes hold the thick brown cotton of her breeches. He draws them down slowly, watching to make sure that she is certain, that she is certain of where this will end…

 

She is.  

 

And when he peels her last covering completely off of her, casting it away behind him along with her boots, and she sees the way his eyes alight on the final part of her vallislin, that part which decorated itself above her most intimate of areas, she knows that she does _not_ want to get rid of the blood writing, that she would never be able to bring herself to remove it.

 

For from that moment on, it would only ever remind of the way the man that she loved was looking at her now: so captivated, so intent, as though she were the only thing that mattered.

 

“You are so beautiful,” he murmurs.

 

He looks almost surprised that he’s spoken out loud. She knows that speaking his feelings was not something that came easy to him, but it was the almost pained way he said them that strikes her, that makes her want to tell him that whatever it was that was slowly eating him up inside, whatever it was that he was hiding would not –could never– change how she felt about him.

 

“Solas,” she implores, placing her hand over his as rested upon her hip. She entwines her fingers with his to draw him back down to her. He returns to her willingly, accepting the kiss, and when she moves to undo his own belt, he doesn’t try to stop her, simply brushes the question against her mouth:

 

“Are you sure you want this?”

 

She meets his gaze as she uses her hold on the parted belt to impel him closer. “You know I do,” she answers resolutely.

 

It doesn’t take long for him to shed his own apparel and though she would very much have liked to let the moment linger, for her to disrobe him as he had done her, they both seemed to have reached their limit.  

 

She barely gets time to see the proud, protruding member of his manhood before he has situated himself above her once more.

 

His kiss is fierce and hot as the full expanse of his skin is pressed flush to her own. Her body moves of its own accord, opening itself up for him, creating the space needed for the muscled broadness of his thighs in between her own.

 

He cups both sides of her head, peering down into her eyes. He shifts himself and then–

 

He is inside her.

 

Her breath stops completely and then starts anew, jagged and stuttered. There’s pain, an ache and a sensation like that of too much pressure–

 

“Are you alright?”

 

She’s not sure when she closed her eyelids but when she opens them again he’s there, his expression one of tender concern.

 

Seeing him is all that she needs to make the flare of pain, of discomfort, recede. What rises to take its place is a feeling that she could only describe as completeness.

 

“Yes,” she breathes in answer to his question, moving her head up to kiss him.

 

He bends his head down to return the kiss but the rest of his body remains utterly still, and continues to do so.

 

She knows that he had to be able to move in order to enjoy it –she _wants_ him to enjoy it– and so, after a moment, she gives just a little squirm, just to see if the pain got worse or better.

 

Her movement causes Solas to break the kiss, and she hears something like a hiss leave his lips. “Don’t…Don’t move if it hurts,” he tells her, but his voice is strained and she realises how much he must be holding back so that she had the time to adjust, to grow accustomed to this new feeling.

 

But she doesn’t want that. She wants him to let go, to take pleasure from her body. “It doesn’t hurt,” she insists. “I want you to move.”

 

When his gaze appears unconvinced she brings her mouth up again to kiss him fleetingly. As she draws back she tightens her legs around his lower half. “Please, Solas,” she begs, staring into his eyes, “I want you. I want you to take me.”

 

She swears his expression almost turns to one of exasperation… and the notion is only compounded when he says after a pause: “I could so easily lose myself in you.”

 

But within the words there was something she hadn’t heard before, something she didn’t ever want to hear, but nevertheless could still be discerned: _Fear_. Solas feared the idea of losing himself in her, of allowing himself to succumb to the feelings that _she_ had already accepted, had already embraced.

 

And she wants to tell him that he didn’t need to be afraid, that no matter what happened, they would be alright…

 

But she can’t.

 

She can’t because she doesn’t know herself. The world they were in, the world that seemed a million miles away from inside this glade and yet which pressed in on them so closely, so relentlessly; that world teemed with danger, with darkness. A darkness that would only grow unless they put a stop to it…

 

No, she can’t lie to him, and she knows that he wouldn’t want her to, but she can make the most of the time they had together. She could give him everything she could and just pray that it was enough.

 

Which is why she leans up to whisper into his ear the only words that she knew _were_ unquestionably true, on every level possible: “I’m all yours.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Geez, so looooong!!! And yeah, don’t ask me why I made her a virgin. I’m pretty sure I was reading another prompt that I was also thinking of doing where the anon wanted the Inquisitor to be a virgin and the two ideas just kinda got muddled inside my brain (it’s a right mess in there I tells ya!) ;D
> 
> Anyway, thanks all! Hope you didn’t choke on the fluff!!


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